This is a recording to change your perception of the Well-Tempered Clavier.

Campbell Vertesi

I have never heard "Book 1" done better. You hear Bach with new ears.

Grego Applegate Edwards

She has a very poetic touch, and seems to have a wide variety of colours at her fingertips

Robert Hugill

Ishizaka plays the 24 preludes and fugues with impeccable taste and technique

Donald Rosenberg, Gramophone Magazine

The Well-Tempered Clavier, with the notes, for those who truly love music.

Robert Cummings, Classical.net

In his review of Kimiko Ishizaka's recording of J.S. Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, Robert Cummings heaps on ample praise while comparing Ishizaka directly to Glenn Gould and Sviatoslav Richter. He enumerates many of the individual preludes and fugues as a means of finding specific aspects of Ishizaka's playing to compliment. Here is a fitting sample of his impressions:

"I could thus go on citing further examples of her superior skills, but let me draw your attention to just one more: try the Prelude and Fugue, in B minor, that close the set. Tension builds subtly in the agitated Prelude and is left unresolved. The same unsettled manner remains in the massive Fugue, but here Ishizaka imparts a more animated and tortured sense to the music with an insistent, almost mechanical style that brims with tension."